The colonel had never been told at the time. He knew Moore was an outcast from the gang.
"Everything," said Jeffrey briefly. "And told of it," he added.
The colonel nodded. Jeffrey put Moore aside for later consideration, and made up his mind pretty generously to talk things over. The habit of his later years had been all for silence, and the remembered confidences of the time before had involved Esther. Of that sweet sorcery he would not think. As he stood now, the immediate result of his disaster had been to callous surfaces accessible to human intercourse and at the same time cause him, in the sensitive inner case of him, to thank the ruling powers that he need never again, seeing how ravaging it is, give himself away. But now because his father had got to have new wine poured into him, he was giving himself away, just as, on passionate impulse, he had given himself away to Lydia. He put his question desperately, knowing how inexorably it committed him.
"Do you suppose there's anything in this town for me to do?"
The colonel produced at once the possibility he had been privately cherishing.
"Alston Choate—"
"I know," said Jeffrey. "I sha'n't go to Choate. You know what Addington is. Before I knew it, I should be a cause. Can't you and I hatch up something?"
"It would be simple enough," he said, "if I had any capital."
"You haven't," said Jeff, rather curtly, "for me to fool away. What you've got you must save for the girls."